Jive

How to spell jive

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce jive

What does jive mean?

1. nounA lively, swinging style of jazz music, and the energetic partner dance performed to it.
2. nounDeceptive, exaggerated, or nonsensical talk meant to impress or mislead.
3. verbTo dance to swing music, or to speak in a teasing, deceptive way.

Jive in a sentence

• noun

  The band played upbeat jive all evening at the wedding reception.

• noun

  The salesman gave us a lot of jive about guaranteed returns.

• verb

  The couples began to jive as soon as the brass section started.

• noun

  They signed up for jive classes to learn the fast partner dance.

• noun

  She saw through his jive and asked for the real figures.

• verb

  He likes to jive with his coworkers, spinning tall tales over lunch.

Where does jive come from?

Language of origin: Other

Jive first surfaced in American English in the late 1920s, emerging from the African American jazz scene of Harlem and the recording studios of the era. Its exact source is genuinely uncertain, which is why dictionaries flag it as origin unknown; some lexicographers have suggested a link to West African words for deceptive or empty talk, but no single ancestor has been proven. Its earliest recorded meanings were 'misleading or pretentious talk' and 'the fast, hip slang of jazz musicians', and from there it broadened to name the swinging, up-tempo music itself and the energetic partner dance performed to it. The spelling settled with a 'j' and a silent final 'e' that lengthens the vowel, giving the rhyme with 'five'. Because it sounds identical to 'jibe', writers often muddle the two: jive is the music and the slang, while jibe means to agree or to taunt.

How the word is built

• jive (single root, no affixes; an American jazz-slang coinage)